I rise today to speak about the legend of Archie Roach, songman and truth-teller. He knew sadness and pain. He knew what it meant to have childhood trauma infect your whole life. He had his own personal demons and went through many bad times before he, with the help of his beloved Ruby, learnt to deal with them. But, incredibly, he used personal suffering to create heartbreakingly beautiful songs and stories that pierced the heart of the nation. 'Took the Children Away', of course, will remain embedded in our national psyche as an expression of an experience which only some families, including my own, actually experienced, but which through Archie's words and music were made intelligible to other Australians. This was done in a way which compelled empathy and which I am convinced was a vital stepping stone along the path to the apology, which could only be delivered by a Labor government and was delivered by Prime Minister Rudd in 2008. 'Took the Children Away' played loudly at the start of the Going Home Conference, attended by hundreds of Northern Territory Stolen Generations survivors, including my father, in 1994. That paved the way for the test case which followed. Archie's songbook extended to other themes and stories, and many of us will talk about it soon.

Watch the speech here: House of Representatives [Part 2] - 04/08/2022 13:24:59 - Parliament of Australia (aph.gov.au)